


The Road Is Fraught with Peril

by Deannie



Series: The Tascosa Saga [4]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, M/M, Supermagnificent AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 16:51:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9194225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: It was entirely possible that this Injun-lover the man was looking for wasn’t Vin Tanner at all, but their luck rarely ran that way, did it? (part of the Supermagnificent AU)





	

**Author's Note:**

> for the hc_bingo prompt arrest

> _In his dreams, the night had been pitch black. Of course he knew that the full moon had shone brightly, giving him and JD and Buck a clear view of the trail he’d traveled on his own more than once in thicker darkness, but dreams twisted what they showed you, didn’t they?_
> 
> _The first gunshot, followed so closely by the second, third, fourth, fifth—a wasteful volley Chris would never let loose—was louder in the dream, each succeeding shot more distinct that it had been in reality. The three men lunged forward, horses galloping, and suddenly Ezra was riding alone into the black._
> 
> _Another bullet, this one striking flesh (true distance and common sense would have been impediments to his subconscious). Another. Another. Ezra raced on, but the cabin never seemed to get any closer. Until two shots rang out in quick succession—Chris’s peacemaker and his own stolen derringer—and he was in the clearing in front of the house he knew as well as his own room._
> 
> _“CHRIS!” His voice was ragged with panic and he was running for the cabin door._
> 
> _Too late. Far, far, too late._
> 
> _Chris’s body, already so scarred and battered, lay bloodied and spent, the final bullet hole between glazed and clouding eyes._
> 
> _And then those dead eyes blinked._

Ezra jolted awake and sighed, not bothering to see how little sleep he’d gotten this time. It hardly mattered.

The nightmares had plagued him since the first time Chris had shared his bed again after that fiasco with Eli Joe Guthry. He remembered waking in the night, unsurprised to find Chris slumbering beside him, his injuries insuring that, for a time, the engineered man slept nearly the hours a normal man would. Ezra had run his fingers carefully over the more than half-healed wounds that had sent him into a panic less than a week before and realized, with some shock, that he’d fallen in with a man whose suffering wasn’t meant to end.

He chuckled to himself now, two days’ stage ride from a home he wasn’t sure he should want. “An embarrassing dilemma,” he murmured to himself, looking out at the silent burg of Bakertown. To fear not that your lover might die at any moment, but that he wouldn’t be able to when the time came.

Chris had been shot three times that day—one that might have been fatal in another man. Ezra had never asked how many times Chris had been shot or stabbed or beaten in his lifetime, and he realized now, rising from his hotel room bed and walking to the window to better see the moon, that he didn’t really want to know.

He’d been a fool from the beginning, damn it. Pining after a man who had no reason to fully trust him—who, though they shared a bed some nights and a cantankerous affection besides, had always kept himself separate and aloof. A man who had lived more than twice Ezra’s lifetime, and could always outlive him by half that much again if circumstances were right.

His mother would say he should cut his losses. Disappear in a more permanent sense than simply wrapping himself in silver and fleeing the scene of the crime. _Don’t go letting them tie you down, Ezra,_ she’d say. _A pretty face is no reason to throw your life away._

Throw his life away? No, he was hardly doing that. He was simply letting himself in for watching his lover get hurt, over and over and over again. Endlessly. Because Chris Larabee was the sort of man that Ezra himself would never be: a man who would always, _always_ , choose to sacrifice himself for another. Any other. Ezra was selfish enough to want a partner who would make the sacrifice for _him_ first, and he knew himself well enough to admit it.

“A poor return on investment, Mr. Standish,” he scolded himself, padding back to his bed. He lay awake for more time than he bothered to count before finally falling into sleep just before dawn. He was unsurprised to wake to exactly the same dream just two hours later.

A poor return indeed.

**********

Chris Larabee woke up about the same time Ezra did that first time, though he was nearly a hundred miles north of him. He hadn’t dreamed—he tried not to as a matter of course. Just woke in the middle of the night, as was his nature now. His unnatural nature as one of the others at the facility had called it. Vin twitched in his sleep across the fire, looking young and beaten down.

Chris was suddenly in the Carolina woods, watching Buck when he was not any older than Vin was now, trying to fold his tall lanky frame into a ball the size of a melon in hopes of hiding from his nightmares. Hadn’t worked any better for him then—and Chris hadn’t missed the renewed shadows under his old friend’s eyes the last few weeks. God, he hadn’t wanted Buck to have to relive that. He’d hoped it would do Vin some good, though.

“Not winning any prizes for leadership, Larabee,” he muttered to himself in the darkness.

_“Trick to leadership is knowing when to kick a man’s ass and knowing when to let him cry in your beer,” Colonel Tibbets had once told him. “It’s not always wise to let a man work out his own demons. Sometimes you have to fight them for him—whether he wants you to or not.”_

Chris couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see. Vin had let slip more than he should when he was hallucinating from Eli Joe’s poison, but Chris still didn’t know the whole story. And damned if he was stupid enough to think that Vin would give it to him. Vin and Ezra were a pair that way—hell, from what Buck’d told him, he wasn’t sure the two of them even told the truth to _themselves._

Thoughts of the gambler made Chris growl in frustration as he rose and started walking the perimeter of the clearing for want of anything else to do. Ezra was… drifting away. Removing himself. Chris’d woken more than once in the night that first couple of weeks after Eli Joe to find his lover tracing the new bullet holes he’d acquired. He thought he knew the problem—some of it anyway—but there was no real way to fix it. Hadn’t been with Sarah, either.

> _“You’ll probably outlive him,” Sarah whispered in the night, her hand rubbing her own large belly. Adam wouldn’t come for a week, but she was already fed up with being pregnant._
> 
> _Chris had tried to make light of it, to change the subject and steer her away from the worry he knew was always there. “You’re sure it’s a boy, now?” he teased. “Last week you were swearing it was a girl.”_
> 
> _Sarah’s look was quelling in the candlelight. “Chris,” she scolded him, her tone still quiet and reserved._
> 
> _“I might,” he allowed. “Won’t make him any less my son.” He kissed her tenderly. “Won’t make you any less my wife.”_
> 
> _“You’ll outlive me too,” she replied. Not as if she’d just realized it, but as if the thought had been too much a part of her for too long. “Do you think about it? What I’ll be like when I’m old?”_
> 
> _Ella had asked him that question, years before the last war, and Chris’s mind stuttered for a moment. “I won’t care if you’re wrinkled and doddering,” he told Sarah truthfully. “I won’t care if you’re frail.” He kissed her again, trying to pour all the love into it that he could. “I love you every minute of our life together and every minute after.”_

And he had. He did. He even still loved Ella, damn it, though it had been more than fifteen years since he’d seen _her_. The shit of living for so damn long was that he’d loved a few people. Loved them and lost them, to death or to circumstance. He didn’t want to outlive another lover, but he knew chances were good he’d outlive Ezra, too.

If Ezra was still his lover. Once Chris had healed completely, the newest scars small thanks to Nathan, Erza had found reasons not to spend the night together. He’d started finding reasons to leave town entirely, in fact, on this errand or that. Chris didn’t want to watch it happen, but something in him couldn’t bring him to stop it. He’d spent his entire time with Ezra wondering _why_ he was with Ezra. If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know what was.

Anyway, maybe it was better this way. Maybe Ezra—and Sarah and Ella and anyone—deserved something more than a life with a man who would probably see a dozen til death do we parts.

And maybe he was kidding himself and trying not to miss the damn invisible man so much. Hell, he was doing just what he’d been scolding Vin for. Giving up. Sixty-six years gave you perspective, if not always wisdom. But hell, any normal person would look at Ezra Standish and see a man who played too damn fast and loose with his own life—and probably the lives of others.

That first might be true, but Ezra’d put his life on the line for all of them a hell of a lot of times in the last year. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe, like Vin, Chris just couldn’t stand watching one more person die.

He sighed and headed for his saddlebag and a book to read by the fire, once he’d stoked it. It wasn’t the first time he’d hated the nights for being so damn long, given him so much time to think. Damn sure wouldn’t be the last.

*********

Ezra cursed the people of Bakertown. Local law prohibited the saloons and drinking establishments from opening their doors before noon. He’d been up since seven and by eleven-thirty, all he really wanted was a drink before he boarded the stage back to Four Corners. To where he _was_ returning. He had to drop off the papers he’d retrieved for Mrs. Potter, after all. Once that was done, though…?

Would it be so bad? Going back to his old ways? Well, perhaps not his _old_ ways—he didn’t think he could submerge this conscience these men had given him quite far enough to shill people the way he’d done before—but _some_ ways. New ways. Ways that didn’t include watching someone he cared for get hurt repeatedly, then heal up enough to do the same damn thing over again. For decades.

If he himself lived that long.

The stage _from_ Four Corners rolled in at noon, headed for Jasper later in the day, and Ezra considered whether he could grab a whiskey or two before the stage from Jasper crossed paths with this one on its way _to_ Four Corners.

A nervous looking woman stood on the boardwalk waiting for it to roll to a stop, her face clearing only slightly when a young, willowy boy stepped out, blinking around sleepily. She stepped forward, nodding her thanks to Mr. Sheppard as the stage driver handed down the boy’s bag.

“Oh, Dermott, love, how are you?” she asked, strangely on the verge of tears. “Was the trip…? Was it all right?”

Dermott brightened slightly for her, but it was clear there was some family tragedy playing out here. “I’m okay, Aunt Tilda,” he told her, unconvincingly.

“Mr. Standish!” Sheppard called down jovially, the volume of his greeting causing the boy, Dermott, to twitch. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Merely extending my help to the Widow Potter,” Ezra assured him. “I expect Mr. Marcus is driving the Jasper run back home?”

“He is, sir,” Sheppard confirmed.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” Tilda told her nephew, who was starting to look a bit better.

“I met a bounty hunter, Aunt Tilda,” Dermott said, freezing Ezra in his tracks as he was turning toward the saloon. “Got off in the last town. He said he was looking for an Injun-lover, to drag him back to Texas.”

“Oh heavens, child!” she scolded him. “Do not speak to strangers like that. We’ll talk at home,” his aunt told him shortly, hurrying the child away.

Palms sweating now, Ezra turned back to the stage without an outward sign of his disquiet. “How did things look in Four Corners?” he asked Sheppard, who was loading luggage for the customers he was picking up here.

“Quiet, Mr. Standish,” Sheppard replied, a teasing smile on his face. “I reckon no one’s ready to cross you all any time soon.”

 _Would that that were true,_ Ezra thought to himself.

“Well, have a safe and uneventful trip, Mr. Sheppard,” he called out in leaving. He turned and headed for the telegraph office. It was entirely possible that this Injun-lover wasn’t Vin Tanner at all, but their luck rarely ran that way, did it?

He’d send Chris a note, warning him of trouble, then set about finding a horse. He could be home by dawn with the right steed…

**********

Kyle Reardon was a plain-looking man, but smart. He had short brown hair and blue eyes, and had the look of a lawman about him—or a scoundrel. His partner, Johnny Gubb, by contrast, was large and tough, eyes and hair dark and blunt; not an easy man to ignore. So when Ezra Standish finished his discussion with the stagecoach driver and headed for the telegraph office with urgent purpose, Kyle nodded to his partner and followed the gambler at an easy pace, leaving Gubb to move to the mercantile across the street from the office, puffing on a cigarette and waiting.

“I would like to send a telegram,” Standish said, as Kyle walked in and nodded to the operator for a blank page, moving off to the desk by the door to write his own missive.

“Five cents a word,” the operator said blandly, handing the fancy-dressed man a sheet. Standish wrote out his message and handed it over.

Telegraph operators fell into two categories, Kyle knew well. The first were those who took the privacy of their customers very seriously. The second were those who didn’t honestly care, so long as they were paid their nickel a word.

It was his good luck this man fell into the second category.

“To C Larabee, Four Corners,” the operator read quietly. Standish’s face turned a little red with irritation at the spoken words, and Kyle turned to his slip of paper, as engrossed as he could be. “Friends from Texas looking for good hunting in the area. Can you advise? EPS”

Friends from Texas? What the hell did that mean? He couldn’t possibly know they were after him, could he? While he and Gubb were set up at Miss Gaines’s spread up north of here, she had her people in Texas, too.

“Fourteen words plus type-time,” the operator said without further comment. “75 cents.”

Standish paid the man and walked past Kyle without looking at him.

“You sending something?” the operator asked.

Kyle smiled, watching Gubb move toward the livery as he shadowed the gambler. “Certainly,” he replied, handing over his own slip.

“To G Mastin, Miller’s Mark,” read the man. “Horse found. Will advise on price when steed is in hand. Kyle.” He looked up. “Twelve words plus type time. 65 cents.”

Kyle pulled out exact coin and dropped it on the counter. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

_Very helpful indeed._

********

Ezra hurried to the livery, trying to convince himself that he was worrying over nothing. He’d be teased when he returned to Four Corners, called a mother hen as they often did Buck. _Please God._

“Can I help you?” a tall, gravel-voiced man asked as Ezra walked in the door of the stables.

“Yes,” Ezra said quietly, damning himself again for leaving Chaucer at home. “I would like to hire a horse. Sure-footed with stamina.” His natural paranoia kicked in. If he came upon this bounty hunter on the trail, the ability to surprise him wouldn’t come amiss. “A somewhat placid nature would be appreciated."

The man looked him over grumpily and probably saw what Ezra knew everyone saw: a dandy and probably well-heeled. He’d be paying extra, but his nerves just didn’t care right now.

“Where you headed?” the man asked, leading the way deeper into the stables.

“Eagle Bend,” Ezra lied. “Possibly farther.”

“Won’t make it there by dark, you know?” the man said. “Hell, won’t even make Four Corners by then.”

“I’m aware, sir,” Ezra replied, taking a very critical look at the appaloosa he was being presented with. She certainly had a calm look about her and stout strong legs. “She looks good.”

“Dollar-and-a-half for a week. Give her to Madden in Eagle Bend if you ain’t coming back this way—extra dollar for that.”

Highway robbery, and Ezra couldn’t help but bicker. “I have friends in Four Corners,” he said cautiously. “Is there someone there I can leave her with who’ll cost a bit less?”

The stableman sniffed. “Give her to Tiny. Two dollars flat.”

Ezra smiled wide and showed his gold tooth while handing over the fee, and all the time, his gut churned.

“Saddle’s a dollar more,” the man said as he tacked up the mare.

Ezra dropped his chin to his chest and opened his wallet once again.

*********

Kyle and Gubb were waiting. Gubb had no idea what for.

“He’s right there,” he said, gesturing to Standish as the dandy loaded his bag on the back of his saddle and mounted up.

“I’m not calling attention to myself in the middle of town, are you?” Kyle asked. “He disappears and we’re seen taking him?” He smacked his partner in the chest and pushed off the section of wall he’d been keeping upright.

Gubb figured he had a point, and they headed to where their horses were saddled and ready at the hitching post in front of the saloon. Kyle waited a while, until Standish was out of town, moving fast, and then mounted. “Well come on, then,” he ordered in that annoying way of his. He was smart, but he wasn’t the boss.

Of course, Gubb followed him anyway. Standish was making good time, rushing toward Four Corners.

“Wonder what lit a fire under him?” Gubb asked as they trailed him. “Sounded like he was all ready to take the stage and such.”

“Just as good for us that he didn’t,” Kyle said with an edge. “I don’t know. Telegram he sent said something about ‘friends from Texas.’”

“Huh,” Gubb thought. “Weird to get so all-fired as that, though, ain't it?”

“Gubb, you are just dense, you know that? He could've—hey, now where the hell’d he go!?”

They’d just crested the next rise and had a full view of the road ahead, and Standish was nowhere to be found.

“Gentlemen,” a voice from behind said quietly. Standish was there, like one of those magic people Miss Gaines sometimes had visit her ranch. “I believe you’re looking for me?”

Gubb drew his gun without thinking and fired, winging the man—

—whose own bullet ended a short and unspectacular life.

 

Kyle watched Gubb fall dead from his horse and cursed.

“Drop your weapon, sir,” Standish requested steadily, blood trickling down his left sleeve. His aim was dead on, though, even as he worked to rein in his nervous horse. Maybe she didn’t like the gunfire.

Kyle lowered his weapon, trying to look like he was giving up. And then he shot the ground at the appaloosa’s feet. She reared hard, her wild eyes going even wider, and Standish slid from her back, letting off a shot that hit a cloud, maybe, but left Kyle free to jump from his own battle-tested gelding and land on top of him, punching him hard in the bloody arm and causing him to drop his gun at the pain.

“He was a good man,” Kyle said, following up with a punch to Standish’s face. “Now I gotta find a new partner.”

Standish brought his knee up and tried to hit Kyle’s goods, but Kyle was too fast for that. He used the gambler’s motion against him and rolled him over onto his stomach, bringing out a length of rope and grabbing Standish’s wrists hard.

“You’re in a heap of trouble, Standish,” he growled. A thought came to him—if Standish really _was_ one of Miss Gaines’s magic men, maybe there was money to be had, here. He improvised, putting steel in his words. “Murdering a federal marshall is a hanging offense.”

*******

“We got trouble,” JD declared as he sat at the table where Buck and Josiah were eating lunch. His voice was low and worried, and Josiah watched the young sheriff sweat as he took a seat. “Someone’s looking for Vin.”

“What?” Buck asked, glancing around. “How do you know?”

JD handed over a telegram slip. “Ezra knows. I don’t know how.”

“‘Friends from Texas,’ huh?” Buck murmured angrily. “Hell, I guess it was only a matter of time.” He sipped his coffee and surveyed the saloon. “Damn good thing Chris took him out of town.”

“We need to let them know,” Josiah said, a very bad feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. Had he missed something? His own emotions had left him preoccupied of late, along with his musings on his life here and the men he lived it with. He tried to open himself to the universe, and felt something hanging on the horizon.

_Damn it._

“They should be nearly to Miller’s Mark by now,” Buck said, rising. “I’ll send ‘em a telegram.”

“What about Ezra?” JD asked.

Buck shrugged. “I’ll tell him to haul his ass home, quick as he can,” he said simply. “‘Bout time he was back anyway, the stubborn cuss.”

Josiah snorted as the tall man walked out. Ezra definitely needed to decide what he was doing—hell, Chris did too, for that matter. Josiah wondered if anyone but himself and Buck even knew the two men were together. _Had been_ together, anyway. The two of them had been going along good until Eli Joe had turned the world upside down.

He rose, looking around the saloon himself and finding none but the usual midday crew of patrons. He needed to find out more about what was coming for them. He didn’t like its taste, and he liked the idea of Vin being caught in the middle of it even less.

“Where you off to, Josiah?” JD asked, following him out the door. The young man was growing up right before them all, his sharp eyes canvassing the area, alert for threats.

Josiah turned toward his church. “To find wisdom, John Dunne,” he told him. He prayed God might give him guidance if the Universe would not.  “If there’s any to be had.”

**********

Ezra took a breath, fighting against the pain of the wound in his arm. It didn’t seem bad, but it was hard to gauge the actual damage when he was trussed up like a goose for dinner.

The surviving man of the pair that had been set to ambush him was burying his partner, a sadness but detached economy to his actions. They might be partners, but they were not a unit. Not at all like the men Ezra himself worked with.

Why in God’s name would there be marshals after him? He’d been almost entirely law abiding for nearly a year, and even before then, he’d rarely been in that sort of trouble. Except, of course, in Wyoming… And that offense had been pardoned. It was hardly one that should have called for a lawman to shoot first and ask questions later anyway.

“May I ask, sir,” he said quietly, trying for a tone of deference. “Why was I to be detained—by federal marshals, of all people?”

“ _Before_ you killed my partner, you mean?” his captor asked, laying the last rock over the dead man’s body, protecting it from predators. He rubbed his hands on his legs a bit nervously. “I’m pretty sure you know, don’t you?”

Ezra wrinkled his brow, something about the man’s tone ringing false. “I’m sure I don’t, sir,” he replied. “I recall the matter of a warrant at Fort Laramie, but that particular matter was vacated some months ago.”

“Just never you mind,” the man said, a smile on his face that Ezra knew intimately. _Greed._ “Once we get where we’re going, I expect it’ll all be clear to you.”

Ezra pulled carefully at the ropes behind his back, but between the man’s fine knots and his own injury, he could make little progress. Something was very wrong here, and Ezra feared it had more to do with their winged friend than with him.

The “marshal” smirked at him, and Ezra let himself look a little more helpless. It wasn’t very hard, actually.

The man shoved his gun in Ezra’s face—close enough for him to smell the oil of it—and gestured for him to rise. Easier said than done with his hands tied behind his back, but Ezra managed. The man looped the rope once around Ezra’s neck, tied the other end around the rented horse’s pommel, then mounted his own horse and grabbed the appaloosa’s reins. His partner’s horse was ponied as well, making quite the awkward entourage. Ezra hoped he could take advantage of that later.

They turned, predictably, toward Texas.

 _Damn it._ Ezra tried to keep his balance as the rope cut into his neck and he had to trot to keep up with his steed.

“You’re surely not planning to walk me all the way there, are you?” he asked, a calculated incredulity in his words.

“Sure as hell ain’t letting you back on your horse so’s you can disappear on me again,” the man replied steadily.

“I’ll choke before you get me there,” he pointed out.

“Probably shouldn’t let yourself do that,” the man suggested. “Course, if you do, I reckon I could let you on your horse, then.”

Ezra snorted his annoyance and, now they’d be safely out of his captor’s sight, coated the ropes at his wrists with silver, feeling the cold of it.

His silver was special—and malleable. When he was inside it, it was warm and protecting, but he didn’t _have_ to wrap the things around him. He could always freeze them instead. And frozen ropes tended, eventually, to snap.

He just had to keep up with his horse long enough for that to happen.

**********

> _The thundercloud was rich and dark and heady. Power leached from it, melting into the countryside ahead of the rain that swept the world away but didn’t extinguish the fires ravaging Earth’s belly._
> 
> _Bodies, sprawled in the wreckage of industry. He couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t feel the souls that had already departed. Something pulled at him and he looked across the chaos, taking in red eyes, a smile that devoured, cold power floating in the mists of the Plane..._

Josiah blinked and the church returned, wiping away the vision of destruction.

“Whatever Hell is coming, Lord,” he murmured. “I believe we could use your help in dealing with it.”

But the Lord had already helped, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that what the power of the seven of them was all about, after all? If there _were_ still seven of them. He closed his eyes again and reached out, feeling the men around him. Even Chris and Vin and Ezra, distant though they were, were at least warmths in his mind. Still seven, then, but...

Something was coming. Something that would change everything.

“Dear God, let us all live through it.”

*******

Kyle’s mind worked, as he led Standish toward Tascosa. The sun was setting and though the dandy had been doing a good job of keeping up with the horses for the last couple of hours, Kyle knew he’d have to stop soon or risk killing him prematurely. Whatever the hell he was.

The hired man had seen Miss Gaines’s friends—strange people with weird ways about them. Some could move things without even being near them, one had killed a horse with a look… And he’d heard them talk about their boss. Samson. He was powerful. He _collected_ people like them. And not just so they could join him in whatever business these magic people were about, but so’s he could see what made them tick.

Kyle didn’t have any idea what made this gambler tick, but no one normal disappeared without a trace from right in front of you and then came at you from behind. He’d been paid up front to kill an ordinary man, but now, with poor Gubb dead back there, he figured maybe, if he was right about Standish, he deserved a little something extra for his trouble.

It ran through his head quickly that some of those magic people were afraid of Miss Gaines’s boss. And maybe he should be, too. But the magic people were always rich, and damn it, Kyle was tired of not being. He was owed, wasn’t he?

Standish stumbled behind him and Kyle looked back at the dandy as Standish choked a little. Kyle slowed the horses. Probably wouldn’t get paid any extra if he killed the guy.

“You all right back there, Standish?” he called with a smile. “Wouldn’t want you dying on me so soon.”

“I assure you, sir, I plan to live a long and prosperous life,” the cocky bastard assured him. Something in his voice made Kyle turn back again. “As soon as I have dealt with you.”

And suddenly, the damn gambler was just _gone_.

“Son of a bitch…”

Kyle spun in his saddle and shot the air where the gambler had been, watching the rope that had held him fall to the ground.

*******

Ezra ducked to the side, feeling the last bit of rope snap and thanking God that he’d undone the loop around his neck before he’d accidentally stumbled and drawn the fake marshal’s attention.

“Where the hell are you, Magic Man?” Another wild shot came too close to Ezra’s mount, and the poor mare balked and jumped to the side. The movement jerked her reins out of the man’s hand and he cursed, turning his gun on her as she bolted.

That would _never_ do. Ezra rushed forward, grabbing for the bit in the mouth of the marshal’s own horse and yanking hard. The horse reared and the man was unseated. Unfortunately, he still held to his gun, and the abrupt movement of the horse dropped Ezra on his ass as well.

He scrambled over to the man before either of them could really regain his wits and kicked the gun from his opponent’s hand, then jumped to retrieve it before shedding his scales and causing the man to cry out in surprise to find Ezra suddenly crouched over him.

“I doubt, sir,” Ezra said quietly, the gun ready in his hand, “that you are the upstanding lawman you make yourself out to be.” He cocked back the hammer of the revolver. “Now, let us start with your name.” He shook his head as the man opened his mouth. “Your real name, if you please?”

“My boss’ll kill me,” was the tight, frightened reply.

“I expect I’ll kill you first,” he pointed out.

The man sagged, defeated, and Ezra, tired and sore, made a massive miscalculation. He lowered his guard that tiny, potentially fatal, bit.

“Not a chance, gambler.”

And Ezra found a knife in his thigh, quick as lightning. The thrust and the pain of it tightened his finger on the trigger and a bullet ended Kyle Reardon’s life without Ezra getting any information from him at all.

“Damn it!” Ezra growled, falling back in pain and disgust. On instinct, he yanked the knife from his leg and flung it away. The wound was bleeding steadily, but it didn’t seem incapacitating.

He stared long and hard at the man who’d tried to kidnap him and wondered who the hell he was and who exactly had hired him. Because of his own incompetence, now he’d never know.

And then it dawned on him, again, that someone had gotten off the stage in Four Corners.

Grunting with the effort, Ezra rose and limped painfully toward his mount. She’d done fabulously when he’d wrapped her in silver to sneak up on these men—perhaps it was providential that he _hadn’t_ had Chaucer with him—but between that and the gunfire, she took a long moment before she was willing to let him untie his bag.

The clothes he wore were irretrievably ruined by then, of course, and he was lightheaded from the traumas of the day as the night started closing in.

“There is no rest for the weary, dear girl,” he told the appaloosa, wrapping the knife wound tightly. “We’d best get back and see what Mr. Larabee’s done to this man’s fellows.”

Unless Chris was already dead. Or Vin was. Or…

“Damn it.”

Ezra tended his arm as quickly as he could, glad to find it little more than a score through the top of his muscle. Worry speeding him on his way, he was atop his horse and headed for home before the last sliver of sun dipped below the horizon….

**********

Nathan was up at dawn, as he often was, but today, he stood on his balcony with the air of a man on watch, instead of one out to enjoy the sunrise.

JD had filled him in on Ezra’s telegram. No one suspicious seemed to be around, but they were all keeping an eye out. Neither Ezra nor Chris and Vin had replied to Buck’s telegrams yet, and Nathan was worried.

Damn it, Vin didn’t deserve this. Nathan knew that if anything happened to anyone because of this, Vin’d take it all on himself. From what he’d raved in his delirium while Nathan was tending him out at Chris’s place, Vin had been made to watch unspeakable things while they had him in Tascosa. Nathan had had his own share of unspeakable. He knew what it did to you when you knew it _wasn’t_ your fault. But, Jesus, what must it be like to believe it _was_?

A line of horses appeared over the ridge south of town, and Nathan watched it come. The trio of animals plodded slowly; tired or just lazy, he couldn’t tell from here.

He wasn’t surprised to hear nothing from Chris and Vin. Chances were they weren’t even at Miller’s Mark yet. They didn’t have a reason to hurry, after all, and it was a haul. But Ezra should’ve got back to them.

He wondered what was going on with the gambler. He’d seemed to be settling in with all of them so well, at least until the last couple of months. Even seemed like maybe they’d start to make it a week at a time before he and Chris were at each other’s throats, but now…

Nathan idly watched the horses come, seeing only one rider now they were nearer. There was a large bundle on the second horse, like a body slung over the saddle. Nathan got a feeling in the pit of his stomach and walked slowly down the stairs as the sun rose in the sky.

He sped up suddenly and jogged toward the edge of town. Damn it, that rider was wearing Ezra’s coat!

**********

Ezra was exhausted as Four Corners came into sight. The appaloosa was a horse worthy of praise, leading the other mounts surely through the moonlit landscape, but an entire night of plodding along ponying two horses—one carrying a dead man he hadn’t meant to kill—was taxing when you were well.

When you’d been fighting to keep two wounds from bleeding, it was all the more difficult. What he truly wanted was a few hours on his featherbed before he went about finding out who this man was and with whom he was working.

That was clearly not to be as he saw a man jogging toward the end of town.

"I believe God is punishing me, dear girl," Ezra told his tired horse, patting her behind the ear.

He had hoped to get to his room and cleaned up before the redoubtable Mr. Jackson found him. When he saw the blood-spotted bandage on his leg and the clean one on his shoulder, the conscientious man was sure to start in on asking if Ezra'd let him use his healing. And even if he didn’t _say_ it, Ezra would see it in his eyes. Just the thought of someone laying hands on him like that gave him the shakes. Even Nathan, who he trusted in damn near everything… but not in that.

"Ezra?" Nathan called, concern and alertness in his voice as he approached. "Looks like you run into something on your way back."

Ezra braced himself for a fight he wasn't sure he had the energy to win. "More than I wished to, certainly, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

Nathan walked up on his injured side, taking in the leg with that practiced eye of his. Ezra would have tried to look hale and hearty, but he was neither and they both knew it.

“Need stitching?” Nathan surprised him by asking. It was a straightforward request, and heartfelt.

“Probably,” Ezra allowed. “Right now, I believe I’d like to deliver this one into Mr. Larabee’s hands and see if we can’t find out who he is and why he and his partner accosted me.” His horse plodded slowly, and Ezra smiled his thanks as Nathan took hold of the girl’s bridle and led her into town. “I fear it has something to do with Mr. Tanner.”

“Yeah,” Nathan said quietly. “See, Chris and Vin ain’t here.”

Ezra stiffened. “Where are they?”

“The Judge sent them up to Miller’s Mark a couple of days ago. Should be there sometime today, likely. Buck’s got a telegram waiting on them there to watch themselves and let us know when they’re headed back.”

 _Fabulous_. Ezra tamped down on his worry and sighed. “Well, I suppose having our winged friend out of town makes finding the man who’s after him a bit safer.”

“Safer like what you run into?” Nathan asked with a grin.

They were at the livery now, and Ezra wasn’t sure he could dismount. Lord, his leg hurt.

Nathan looked up at him. “You gonna fall off the damn thing or let me help you?” The fond annoyance was strangely comforting.

“I would appreciate some assistance, Mr. Jackson,” he allowed, glad to have a steadying hand on his arm as he slid down to place his feet carefully on the ground. “And she is not damned in any way.” He patted the sweet horse on the neck and dug out a dollar for the stable boy who was standing by. “Treat her well,” he told him, letting Nathan give him a shoulder to lean on as he untied the reins of the other horses, separating the one carrying his erstwhile captor’s body. “She’s carried me through a night I’d rather not relive.”

“You get on upstairs,” Nathan told him, taking the reins out of his hand. “I’ll get this one over to the undertakers, then come back and take a look at that leg.”

Ezra nodded. He hadn’t mentioned the bullet wound and wasn’t about to derail Nathan by doing so now. As he hobbled up the stairs to the clinic, Ezra looked out over the town he’d called home for the last year. Worry for Chris and Vin was thick in his mind, but there was a sort of… contentment to coming home. For as long as it _was_ his home.

He smiled wryly to himself. Well, he certainly couldn’t leave until they’d vanquished the current threat, could he? And not before Chris and Vin returned safely.

 _No,_ he thought as he opened Nathan’s door and stumbled to the cot, lying down—just for a moment—to wait for the healer to reappear. _You’ll have to stay a while._ Sleep began to claim him, and he sighed. _Surely it won’t be that bad…_

********  
the end


End file.
